Transgender influencer NikkieTutorials blackmailed into coming out

THE NETHERLANDS – Dutch YouTube star NikkieTutorials came out as transgender in a video posted on Monday. She said that she always wanted to share her story, but under her own circumstances, and she did not expect to do so this week. But people have been blackmailing her and threatening to leak her story in the press, she said, calling their actions “vile” and “gross”.

“Today I am taking back my own power,” Nikkie de Jager said in her 17
minute long video. “It is a brand new year. It is 2020 and I want to
start the year off with the truth (…) I was born in the wrong body.
Which means that I am transgender.” She said that filming the video was
scary. “But it feels so liberating and freeing.”

She hopes that her story will inspire “little Nikkies around the
world. Who feel insecure. Who feel out of place. Who feel
misunderstood,” Nikkie said. “Just like me, you get to write your own
story. Live your life. Live it without any restrictions. You can be you.
You are in charge of how you want to live your life.”

Nikkie knew that she was a girl since the day she was born, she said.
At age six she grew her hair out, she switched to girls clothes only by
age seven or eight. When she was 14 she started taking hormones. “And
by the time I was 19, I fully transitioned.”

The most important thing Nikkie wants her viewers to take away from
this is: “I am me. I am still Nikkie. Nothing changes about that. The
last thing I want in my life, is for you to not trust me anymore, or for
you to look at me with different eyes, or look at me in a different
manner, or think that I have changed,” she said. “Please know that this
doesn’t change anything about me. My love for makeup has always been
real. I have always been real.”

With 12.5 million subscribers, Nikkie is one of the most successful
Dutch YouTubers. Her channel focuses on makeup and makeup tutorials and
she has followers from al over the world. She’s collaborated with
celebrities like Kim Kardashian, Lady Gaga and Katy Perry, according to
NOS.

Brand Berghouwer, chairman of Transgender Netwerk Nederland, told NOS
that Nikkie coming out can be great support for young people currently
struggling with their identity. It is also important for emancipation
that well-known transgender people speak out, he said. “The more people
who come out of the closet as trans, the more normal it becomes.”